TITLE: Message in a Bottle
AUTHOR: MikeJaffa
SYNOPSIS: Spoilers for the series finale: Peter gets Neal's final message
DISCLAIMER: I do not own the rights to "White Collar" and I am not making any money off this fic.
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SPOILERES FOR THE SERIES FINALE! DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVNE'T WATCHED IT!

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I am standing in a shipping container like a hundred others. I came here because the number on the container, and the number on its key, was on the cork in a wine bottle left on my front stoop. The container is something of a batcave: It's filled with furniture, paintings, and a work table loaded with evidence that a man I thought I'd buried a year ago is, in fact, alive after he faked his own death.

I am Special Agent In Charge Peter Burke of the FBI, and I should be angry.

In the course of performing their duties, the various agencies of the Department of Justice are assisted by confidential informants. These fall into two broad categories. The first group is composed of honest citizens with knowledge of a crime who come forward. They are not criminals, just average people who know about criminal activity.

The other group consists of criminals who offer their services to law enforcement in exchange for a reduced sentence. Neal Caffrey was definitely part of this second group. He was a con man, a thief, and a forger – one of the few people who could do it all. By his nature, he couldn't be trusted, especially because his stock in trade was engendering trust. Accordingly, when the FBI retains a confidential informant, the Department of Justice has strict rules for handling CIs, and what they can and cannot do while working with agents. Violating these rules usually revokes the deal and sends them back to prison. In many cases it's not believing in rules as such as believing their personal rules make more sense than society's along with this notion that, 'As long as I do what you ask me to do, I can do anything else and it's ok.' Well, no it's not. And so they usually end up back in prison.

Usually.

Then there was Neal. Anything about him isn't quite described by "usually."

Start with his tracking anklet. Neal insisted on having the biggest radius he could possibly get. I eventually found out the US Marshalls responded by making him one of the guinea pigs to test an experimental system that didn't so much assign as fixed radius as keep track of the amount of surface area on the Earth he covered and flag us if he went outside his "territory." This explained why he once needed a change in his Radius to visit Roosevelt Island even though he had been to Queens and Brooklyn any number of times, with and without me. (Neal, of course, understood the system and tried to explain it to me a few times. I never let him get too far along because my head would feel like it was going to explode. An old buddy of mine from the Marshalls explained it over a beer once so I was covered.)

Then there was Neal himself. Yes, he was a career cimininal and a con man who could sell ice machines to the Eskimos. But he had a heart. I won't say he had a heart of gold, but I don't believe he was an emotionless sociopath, either. He enjoyed working with the White Collar unit and liked us all personally. A fellow agent once derisively referred to us as Caffrey's Crew. But if that was how Neal saw us, I take it as a compliment. I believe that if he had been given a choice after release from the anklet, he would have stayed with White Collar. Whenever anyone asked me, "How can you trust him?" I would say, "When you're in a cell in a basement and you can call only one person on a stolen cell phone to talk you though a jail break, who you gonna call?" You wouldn't want him alone with your valuables. But when lives were on the line, he was there. He wanted to be there. And he would have, yes, given a choice…and no other issues.

But as I said, with this type of CI, there are always issues, and Neal was no exception. But even then, he was outside the lines. Start with how he broke out of prison with weeks left on his sentence. Why? Because the girlfriend who had waited for him up to that point had left him. It turned out she was under the thumb of a corrupt FBI agent who'd been bought by a criminal mastermind who was after a priceless Nazi treasure in a sunken U-Boat, and the key to finding it was in a music box everyone thought Neal had stolen but he hadn't, so eventually, he had to break into the Italian Consulate and steal it again.

Yeah. And that was just for starters.

And so began the unprecedented and certainly contentious partnership between a small group of FBI agents and a pair of criminals, Neal and his friend, Mozzie. I had to admit – when we worked together, we worked well. But by the same token, we were at cross-purposes. And furthermore, as much as Neal might have found appeal in an honest life, for him and people like him, the life is a drug they just can't resist. It's an addiction that's too hard to fight. Why work for a measly paycheck when you can get ten times your annual income in one weekend? And when you have the tastes Neal has, buying suites off the rack will wear pretty thin when you're used to having them tailored by the finest clothiers in New York.

So Neal had those impulses and history – and his own nature - working against him. But people on my side were no help either. The fact is Neal was *too* good at what he did. So good some in the FBI didn't want to let him go free as promised, not trusting him to stay with us of his own free will. That's the thing about Neal – he'll hold up his end, and be more than happy to do it, as long as you hold up your end. And if it had just been the two of us, I would have. But it wasn't just us. The goal post kept moving.

So it was a blessing when he was shot.

"You're free," I said, holding his anklet, and sobbed as I sat alone on a bench in the morgue.

Of course, everything went back to "normal." No more convoluted cases involving beautiful women, stolen treasures, and clues. No more alliance between cons and FBI agents. Everything became boring, I suppose. The world not such a bright place without him. But I trudged on and did the Job. He would have wanted me too, I know.

Yet a year later, I am standing in a shipping container looking at…a piece of art. That's what it is. The furniture, the paintings, the work table, the orgy of evidence that he faked his own death. It's an artwork, all for me.

I should be angry. I spent a year grieving. I turned down a plumb job in DC because I couldn't take, not when that case had cost my friend his life. I named my newborn son after him. I still see him. Some would say Neal made a mockery of all of that…but I don't. I should be angry, but I'm not.

Like I said, Neal has a heart. He does care. He told me I was his best friend, so he couldn't let me suffer forever. And that's what this is, a message. I know what the message is:

'Don't worry, Peter. I'm ok. I'm sorry I left you in a lurch like that, but this was the only way out. You're an FBI agent; I'm a criminal. There are only so many ways this could end. This is the best for everyone.'

He's probably right.

As I leave, I find Mozzie's Queen of Hearts card. No surprise he was in on it too. I should call an evidence team, but I won't. For one thing, it'll all disappear, if not right after I leave then on the way to the FBI's evidence storage. And that assumes anything could be traced back to him. He wouldn't have left this for me if he thought that were true.

But I know something else that Neal doesn't know, or at least doesn't admit to himself.

I know he'll be back.

He's already been back to New York under my nose to set this up. He's left the back door open – this is too much his home. And someday, he'll need it.

Somewhere, a mastermind is hatching a scheme. A law enforcement officer is being bribed. And an improbable trail of clues is being laid. At least one beautiful woman is getting involved.

And the only ones who will be able to do anything about it will be an unlikely alliance of FBI agents and con men. Caffrey's Crew will ride again. And when the dust settles, Neal will be back at White Collar with his anklet on and a smile on his face. Yes, even in spite of the crimes he is probably involved with now, he'll get it. Deep down, it's what he wants, and Neal always gets what he wants.

I put the playing card in my pocket: 'Message received and understood.' The world seems a brighter place when I step out of the container.

I'll have to keep a stern mask on back at the Bureau. But I can't wait to tell Elizabeth.

THE END